


Lady and the Lion

by jenna_thorn



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She likes to think that Jack would recognize her guns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady and the Lion

She shrills into the waves, laughter salted with tears. Barbossa doesn't hear her. Jack did hear her. He does still, she thinks. Not in words, no, but he hears her pulse and her heartbeat, hears the same song she hears, the heartbeat comfort of the wind in the rigging, the percussion of the waves, the discordant twang of a line break, the fearsome crack of a broken mast, no not hers, never hers. Or at least never again. With this half life, as cursed as her crew, comes supernatural speed and strength. She fears no loss. Fearlessness is not enough.

She likes to think that Jack would recognize her guns.

She remembers his footstep, the slap of the sea, the world's touch, the oppression of baking heat and the relief of cool water as the tide finally turns and the doldrums float away, the boredom of sitting stagnant at dock with the effluvia of humanity tainting the water and the joy of running with the wind cresting through storm surge and shining under a crown of spattered foam. The orgasmic scrape of careening and the rasp of rope knotting tight, tying her to herself, to her crew, the anchor chaining her to the sea floor or the storm lines running her length, frail protection for frail men, their boots sliding in the surge.

Pursuit is almost enough. She feels the Interceptor brush by, taunts the lion's roar not so much by force of habit, but in hope of habit renewed. She wants to run. No, she wants to _want_ , and perhaps running would be enough.

The Interceptor is a handsome enough ship, she grants, but no match for her now. Perhaps before, when she was real, when she could feel, when she rode clean salt and fish breath and not the black wind of Hell itself. The lion prowls through the water like a cat through weeds and it's almost enough, a tickle, if not a caress. She laughs, taunts the kitty with a dove gray feather, bares her teeth and tugs the chain. _Shed your red wool and play with me,_ she sings. _Bare feet tickle me where boots scuff you. Don't you want to play? Here kitty, here kitty kitty._

And so they talk through that night singing through the water, as Captain and Commodore lie in wait for an ambush that never comes. He whispers of the comfort of safe harbor; she counters with the joy of a fast wind. He threatens the typhoon; she reminds him of the tide that pulls the hawsers taut, that abandons a moored ship. They are made to run the sea and oh, if only she had Jack, for the Interceptor loves his Commodore as much as she loves her Captain, and together they, the four of them, would chase through the white foam of island breakers and tempest into seasons and eventually song. They would be legend, her Jack and his James, privateers and free.

The lion roars his approval; he will have her, he will wind his ropes around her, bind her to him with a wedding ring of tar stained hemp and they would run together, under his master, tamed by the might of the Navy that conquered the world, an Armada that would never see defeat. They will run together under honest sail, honest seaman and the king's colors.

She laughs. No boot black for her capstan, no, nor Royal orders in the cabin, but perhaps…perhaps …

But they can agree on this, on shared water and the Caribbean green, the edge of a squall and the blue-black force of the tempest and the red dusk that heralds fiddles on deck and dancing. Fish brighter than paint in scattered droplets and dolphins racing alongside. This they can share, a wild chase and a reef to shelter behind and love songs whispering through the hawsers.

She, wild though she is, still must respond to helm and rudder, and he, captive as he is, must do the same. He slides away under cover of night.

The hunted becomes the hunter then and even black Barbossa can feel her leap as the chase is called. She knows the sweeps and stretches into the long turn, shudders in expectation as the cannons are run out. She winces at the damage the guns inflict, but the Interceptor is not even so damaged as she, leaning to port as she is, bleeding inward the salt sea. Yet even as she lists, now she has a companion to run the sea with. She'll never forgive the mutineer, even with her hate dulled by the cold curse, weathered by years of running without patches for her sails, but oh, he has given her the Interceptor to crest with, a lion for a playmate and a ship of the line for a shieldman. Her heart has shrunk since the curse, her capacity for love dimmed, but oh, even if she can feel no more than friendship, no more than a whisper of joy, it is better than she has had in many years. Even if she cannot feel the crash of wind against her prow, she can watch it on his, and perhaps share an echo of his joy.

She hopes. And after a moment of fire and shaking water, she thanks the cold that has seeped into her hull. For surely if she were whole, the shards of debris thrown through her sails, the wake of the explosion that rips the Interceptor in half, would tear her in two along with her lion, her lover. Oh, if her heart were not frozen, it would surely break.

For the first time in twelve years, she welcomes the black fog that separates her from the world. She is as dead as the grinding tarsals that scuff her deck, for all that her hull is still whole, for all that she floats through the shattered planking of the Lion.

Jack's voice rings on her deck and she cannot bring herself to care.


End file.
